Furlough 41: Confession

For my day off, I sat at my kitchen table, had some yogurt, and drank some tea and that’s all I did. It was amazing.

It’s always great when I shut off every distraction and just sit and listen to the world around me. Stillness is bliss. You are just ARE.

Today I tried something new. I told myself that I would only eat and drink and that’s it. It’s the first time I gave myself a direct order. Once I gave myself that order, of course, my mind exploded into action.

First I want to physically do things. I wanted to get up, I wanted to check my phone, I wanted to pick the dead leaves off my plant right by my window, I wanted to move pictures around on my wall. But every single time I wanted to do something, I told myself just eat and drink.

I felt nervous, then I felt calm. As another urge bubbled up from my body to my head and back again, I focused back on my breath and the world around me. At first I thought I’d calmed down.

But next I realized I wanted to do things but just as thoughts in my mind. I set myself a list of things to eventually do once I got up—I wanted to collect from my shelves books to read, I needed to do the dishes, I needed to blow my nose and text my friends and check my social media. From these thoughts came emotions—desire, craving, guilt, shame, fear, boredom.

What I realized is that my mind swims in a sea of desire. All around me is a world that I must either get or avoid, which is just two sides of the same coin of Wanting. And the more I thought about it, the more I saw that everything in my life revolved around this Wanting—love, sex, friendship, fun, boredom, self-improvement, everything.

It even goes into my writing. When I look at a tree or a flower, I want to record that down on as a poem or a story. Something inspires me and I want to create to record it.

This all, by the way, is happening as I am reading about acceptance, of self and everything outside of myself. And this is important because to practice acceptance, I first must study Wanting.

There’s nothing wrong with me for wanting to be better than I am, for me wanting to read and watch videos and to learn about everything around me. There’s nothing wrong with me for wanting to prune my plant or to look at my phone or to want a zillion other things in this life. It only becomes a problem when I don’t understand why I am doing what I do or worse when I don’t even know I am doing it because it’s become a habit.

I don’t really know what to do with this revelation of Wanting, but it’s OK because I realize I don’t want to do anything with it just yet.

And that includes this post.

I always feel like I have to say something here or teach you something or be significant in some way, and that’s not what I want anymore. All I want to do is show you what I’m going through. And if you feel me, cool and if not, that’s cool too. And going forward, that’s exactly how I want to write this—not as an instruction from someone who knows anything but as a confession of someone who is trying their best. 😊

This was a big step for me today because once I realized that I’m awash in this constant flux of thoughts and emotions of wanting and craving, then I can take the necessary steps towards acceptance of everything about me as well as the world.

Baby steps. Always with baby steps. And plenty of forgiveness.

This has been a great morning. Thank you so much for sharing it with me.